Companionship’s Five Practices, Part 2: Neighboring

By Rev. Mark Stephenson 

Executive Director, Pathways to Promise

Companionship is a way of presence, a relationship responding to isolation and suffering and supportive of healing and recovery. Companionship is rooted in five practices which build on one another, beginning with Hospitality which offers a safe, sacred space in the personal sense. Companions respect every person as an equal, endowed with dignity and agency to set their own course for their lives. 

Craig Rennebohm, founder of the Companionship Movement, describes the second practice, neighboring, like this:

“Neighboring is not about who’s better or who knows more; it’s not about achievements or accomplishments. It’s about setting aside power and privilege; it’s about leaving behind the culture of competition in order to simply be and become within the sacred space we create with another. It’s about being on the human journey together.” (The Way of Companionship: Welcoming the Stranger, p. 28, italics his.)

When we neighbor another person, we seek common ground between us and avoid the frames we use often to pigeonhole each other such as education and income level, marital status, ethnicity, county of origin, and many others. Frames might be important to establish credibility, such as the ways I have framed myself in my byline above. However, frames can separate us from another by emphasizing power and privilege, of which people who feel isolated and marginalized are only too aware. Much better, Rennebohm suggests, to begin a conversation with a simple greeting, “I’m Craig. How do you like to be called?”